The first time you ever heard about something that is now commonplace

[CormoranStrike]

I have two.

I was chatting to a guy who had an audio company in the early 90s I reckon and he mentioned Bluetooth, which confused me. He raved about this new tech and said he was sure it would be massive.

The other was interviewing a forensic scientist on his retiral from the police. He had been the most senior of his speciality at Lockerbie.

He was explaining transference (Occam’s razor) and I can remember sitting on his couch in his living room in the small village he lived in and saying, “wait, do you mean evidence of me having been in your house is now indelibly here, I’ve left traces?” - totally fascinating.

There started a fascination with crime novels, too.

I think it’s entirely possible for people only to be hearing about the internet from 1997 ish. I first came upon it probably in 1994 or 1995 when my friend had it in her house for her dads job. It involved loads of cables running through the house and very long waits for nothing very exciting. I then used it at university in 96 but again it didnt seem that great. Dont think i had an email address til after 2000.

In the late 80s I worked with a blind lady. She trialled all sorts of cool tech.
Telextext with no adverts.
An electronic Braille reader that poked up plastic pins to form Braille keepers as it read each line on the screen.
And finally , my favourite , a device that you held up to clothes and it ‘spoke’ what colour the fabric was so you could match up your outfit. Awesome 😎

@LeeBird Tania, why do you need to work ? 😂

I remember first hearing about the AIDS /HIV virus,back in 1985 (I was 21). I was astounded that this awful illness was just making itself known. It seems incredible,when I look back,that I lived my entire childhood and teen years without ever having heard of it.

i remember being in my first year and being told about ‘face book’ which had finally come to my uni...

And I work in IT. Back in the 80s on huge mainframes with tapes and machines that went ‘ping’. They took up huge hangar-like rooms with vast teams to look after them.
Then they delivered a PC to our office. It sat there next to the HUGE (but bleeding edge) fax machine. I looked at and asked what it was. ‘A computer. A personal computer’ they replied. ‘Yes but what do I do with it ?’

People used to come and watch the fax machine work , and to see the PC in action.

Hyperlinks. I think it was 1994 or 5 and I was doing a qualification in information science. The lecturer explained that you would no longer need to read a paper or a book from front to back, or begining to end, but could jump about easily and without having to refer to an index. Mind blown!

When I was a baby my mom installed a phone at our house. The year was 1997. This was when it was just becoming commonplace. Now we all have smartphones and iPhones instead.

In a media studies lecture in 1999. Lecturer was telling us all about this new tv show from Holland. A bunch of normal people living together in a house being filmed 24 hours a day. We were incredulous. "What, they're filmed when they're asleep?" "When they're in the bathroom?" This was the very start of Big Brother and the whole concept was shocking, even before they introduced all the game playing and deliberate attempts to create controversy.

April - landlines becoming commonplace in 1997? Eh? But most people have surely had landline phones since the 1950s or 60s?

Oh, I see maybe by 'installed' a phone you meant she got a mobile/cellphone

My parents were early adopters of compsci (as it used to be known!) as they worked for a computing business that was responsible for computerising the London Stock Exchange, so we had a home IBM in the late 80s. I wasn’t allowed to do much other than watch the DOS scroll through (still DOS back then as it was before Microsoft bought it and renamed it QUDOS),

School refused to allow me to take Computing GCSE when options came round in 1988 as i was academic and would be “wasting” a pass.

Used JANET all the time at uni and can still remember my address! Most essays still handwritten though and the library computer would refer you to typed cards to actually find the book or journal. There were 3 computer labs if you could book one to type up essays, but most of us left them to the poor sods sweating over their dissertations with the constant fear of losing everything.

I used Netscape (I loved the little revolving earth in the top left corner) even if there was very little actual content in 1995.

Who remembers when scarves that you looped round and poked back through the loop came in? (Ie how we all wear them now) Before that just a casual throw one scarf end over your shoulder (and it fell off all the time so you got cold.
It was a revelation for me.

When I was 18 in 1999 I was going out with this guy who was a proper computer geek. He first showed me the internet. I thought it was amazing you could read stuff and play quizzes. I also remember trying to call his landline and being constantly engaged. I asked him who was always on the phone. He was using dial up internet to play online.
Also I remember thinking 1471 was amazing!

I worked at orange in late 2000 and saw a presentation for a phone attached to a mobile phone... it was envisioned to be useful for insurance assessors. Orange was getting three total that Christmas to sell 😂

I was amazed by that new scarf technique too! Took me wuite a while before i figured it out though. Before that i just looped it round my neck so would go up to my mouth and keep my face warm in freezing weather.

22 years ago I started working for the commercial arm of a very well known broadcasting company. In my induction session, the Head of TV told us that within 10 years we'd all be watching TV programmes whenever we wanted and that programmes wouldn't be confined to set dates and times. "On demand" he called it. I was open mouthed.

I also had a boss who had once worked in marketing for a leading Japanese technology company. When camera phones were first introduced, he told me that in a few years we'd be watching TV on them and using them instead of computers. Again, I was agog, as my work "laptop" at the time was a proper knee-breaker, it was that big.

pinkprincess I remember the first Orange TV adverts. “The future’s bright, the future’s Orange” with no reference to what Orange was.

I remember reading the instruction booklet that came with my first mobile phone and thinking this new thing called SMS where you could send people messages sounded quite good.

Sweet and sour chicken.
In my friend's house - her mother was young and trendier than mine. I thought it was disgusting. It was a long long time ago.

Another one for me was nachos. Around 20 years ago visiting a friend in a big city and I couldn’t get my head around that it was ok to order a giant plate of crisps for tea 😆

This is a great thread! I moved abroad for work at the end of 1997, remember waiting impatiently for hand written letters to arrive. Then someone told me about email where you could send and receive instant letters! Also internet cafes appeared for people like me who didn't have computers, was a godsend for me.

Not sure if anyone's mentioned it already, but I remember seeing on Tomorrow's World (can't remember which year) about glass coffee tables and screens that you could just touch and it would work just like a computer, but without buttons!

Also in my first year at university, in 1995, my friend telling me about this new email thing. She was really excited and said I just needed an email address and then I could send her a message. I didn't understand why as I was standing there talking to her!

My first mobile was bought in 1994 and was fairly brick like. Maybe a half brick.

I remember being in junior school, circa 1980, and the cooks making spaghetti bolognaise. We were so taken aback with this new-fangled food that the headmaster had to speak to the whole dining room telling us we all HAD to try it.

The internet - a colleague at work did some training presentation to show us all how it worked to send a message to someone else. We all came away going 'what's the bloody point of that?' For a while I remember the office used to print your messages out if you were emailed and put them in your pigeon hole. Such a palaver, we were all sure it would never catch on.